


The Man Who Ruined My Life

by CavannaRose



Series: Rose Wilson Fics [22]
Category: Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Forgiveness, Gen, Goodbyes, Memories, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 12:16:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17704106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CavannaRose/pseuds/CavannaRose
Summary: Rose thinks about the one man responsible for everything awful that came into her life.





	The Man Who Ruined My Life

I sit in yet another graveyard, watching the world walking past me, thinking about the man that ruined my life. Most who know me would assume that meant I was thinking of one person, Slade Wilson. My father, teacher, tormentor, the man who seems wholly unable to just leave me be. They would be wrong, though. Though he had done as much as he possibly could to both drive me away and bind me to him eternally, he wasn’t where it all started. That was a different man, dead now this past decade.

William Randolph Wintergreen. The name on the stone behind me says very little to the world at large, but to a select few, it was an important one. He’d been the one man who believed Slade Wilson had a moral code and was a worthy man. It had, of course, led to his downfall. Everything and everyone Slade Wilson touched in any way died… except me. Like a stubborn weed I keep thriving, no matter what life and my father throws in my path. It all could have been so different, though, if not for Wintergreen and his interference.

I’d been so happy, growing up in the brothel that Sweet Lilli had owned. There were other kids to play with, and everyone knew that the Madame was me mother, so they didn’t give me any trouble. Mama had escaped the Khmer Rouge and genocide. No one was tougher than Lillian Worth as far as I was concerned. She taught me to speak Khmer, Jarai, French and English. She taught me to be a survivor, and we had cherished each other. Not knowing who my father was hadn’t ever bothered me, it barely registered. I had no need to know who he was, since he never visited.

Wintergreen would visit, though. A pleasant British man with a mustache who would check in on my mother from time to time. Eventually he noticed the white-haired girl amidst all the dark-haired Cambodian women and children, and questions were raised that Lilli didn’t seem inclined to answer. That was the moment where Wintergreen ruined my life. That was when he made the connection between the age of Rose Worth and the romantic affair that the man known as Deathstroke, the Terminator had with a Cambodian princess named Sweet Lilli.

I remember liking the man’s mustache, and his funny accent. He’d asked me dozens of questions, and even gave me a few sweets. If only I had known that while playing nice he was making decisions that would end my entire way of life, I would have slit his throat and left him for dead right there, eleven years old or not. Mama had taught me a trick or two to keep me safe. He kept visiting, trying to convince my mother that my father needed to know I existed. His persistence caught someone’s attention, and then Wade LaFarge, Slade’s brother, took me captive, planning to kill me. Mother couldn’t allow it, and she and Wintergreen came to the rescue. Mother didn’t make it back, and no one at home lived through the exchange either.

Wintergreen comforted me. He took me in like his own, and then he told my father who I was. Slade had no use for a daughter, foisting me off on the Titans like they had the means necessary to care for a child as mentally scarred as I had been. I went into the foster care system. Margaret and Mark Madison were a dream. Affectionate, attentive, forgiving of my violent outbursts at school. They understood trauma, and that recovering from it took time. Then LaFarge came back. Killed everyone I loved all over again. Slade could apparently forgive one attack, but not a second. He used me as the implement of his justice, and finally saw a use for his teenage daughter. I could kill.

None of this crap would have been possibly without Wintergreen. He thought he knew what was best, he thought he knew my father best. It’s just frustrating, to know that one man could know another so well and so little at the same time. I know Slade pretty well by now, enough to know he’s not entirely the monster I call him. That almost makes it worse. He has a set of rules, his own rules that he follows. Every choice he makes is a conscious decision. He decided to be the monster he is. He decided to try to forge me in his own image, and then discard me. Over and over again.

He never would have known about me if not for Wintergreen. LaFarge never would have found me. Despite that, I can’t hate the man. He sacrificed his entire adult life to serve a man who eventually killed him. Slade is death to anyone he holds affection for. Grant. Joey. Their mom, Adeline. My mom. Wintergreen. All gone now. I won’t follow in their footsteps. Does my dad love me? Maybe in his own way. Maybe that’s why he tries to make me hate him. If he doesn’t love me, maybe I won’t die like the rest, which is its own weird kind of love in itself. Blackest Night taught me that Slade feels love, deep down inside, and now it’s impossible to hate him, though I sure don’t like him.

Wintergreen would be easy to hate. His blind devotion to the ideal of a man led to the death of everything I held dear. One by one LaFarge took it all away from me, all to punish a father I hadn’t even known. I wasn’t asked if I wanted to know Slade, it was just assumed that since he was my father, and Wintergreen thought he was a good guy, that it should be that way. Sighing, I stood up, patting the stone lightly with my scarred hand. Hands that had dealt more death than my child self could have imagined. “You were wrong, old man. So wrong, but I forgive you.”


End file.
